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Pedantic Paula
Welcome to the latest character in our series portraying different types of internal clients.
The personPaula is a Brand Director, and takes a very keen interest in any figures and analyses that arrive at her desk. These include both results produced directly for her, and those produced for others in marketing. However, she is very analytical by nature and loves the minutiae: she is always suspicious of the numbers unless she has seen everything for herself.
The problem
This leads to some real issues:
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Whilst her colleagues try to insist that people don’t get bogged down in detail and don’t give presentations with countless PowerPoint slides that show every last figure, Paula insists otherwise.
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Because she always wants to see the detail, if she hasn’t seen it for herself, she can potentially undermine any confidence in the results.
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Worse still, she isn’t actually a trained statistician – and she will sometimes be critical of the analysis, even if it is right.
On the positive side, once she is satisfied with the results, she can then be an advocate, and will use them to build a case for action.
The question is: how can you get Paula on-side without compromising the way in which the data are presented to a wider audience? It’s important to ensure that her insistence on looking at the detail doesn’t turn others off.
The solution
The answer lies in both patience and prediction. You need patience to allow extra time to meet her needs separately; and prediction to see in advance the areas that may cause her concern.
Be honest with her, and acknowledge that you know she loves detail as much as some others hate it. Then you can start to agree your approach with her. The best solution is probably to give her a full, detailed set of results prior to any formal presentation. If it’s a project for someone else, but you know she will be at the presentation, you can head her off by saying something like, “For those that want to see all the detail, we have a separate file available, even though we don’t have time to go through it now.”
If Paula has already seen the details, this may prompt her to ask awkward questions that aren’t relevant to the main thrust of the discussion. You could forestall her by saying, “We want to present you all with a clear overview of the project and the main findings. However, if anyone wants to discuss specific details, perhaps they could talk to us in person about these later, so that we can look into any issues more carefully.”
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